I think you misplaced the 5 from Scotland's score when you wrote the French one down.

Yours, blindly optimistically........

Pablo

01-02-05, 14:02

OK, having followed the New York Times (The Paper of Guesses) sports pages' attempt at predicting exact scores for the NFL for some years (record to date: 2 correct, 464 wrong), I will instead try to predict winning margins:

I don't remember whose book it was - Garteh Davies, maybe - but there was a comment that he never wanted to beat England by 50.
Instead, he wanted it to be a controversial last minute try that gave Wales the win by one point, only for TV replays to show that it should never have been given as a try!

OB..

01-02-05, 16:02

Surely that was a newspaper report on the 1999 game at Wembley!! :mad:

Simon Griffiths

01-02-05, 17:02

Indeed!

My preditctions are as follows (I shall follow Pablo away from the suicide that is predicting exact scores):

Through complete unbiasness and love of no certain country i'll go for:

Wales 21 England 18
France 24 Scotland 26
Italy 18 Ireland 38

what????

didds

03-02-05, 09:02

Ok...

england by less than 7 OR more than 20.
ireland by 15
france by 15

didds

Pablo

07-02-05, 13:02

Right, just to keep tally of how successful our predictions are, could I suggest a tally system like the one my friends and I use in our NFL predictathon. Very simple:

Attempt to predict winning margins.
Score one penalty point for each point by which you miss the exact margin.
Score an additional ten penalty points for predicting the wrong winner.
Lowest penalty points total at end of 6 Nations is the winner.

I'll demonstrate this week's scores (for Wayne and Rob, I've ignored the exact scores and just taken the margins):

Missed out on week 1, but in retrospect I reckon I'd have been way off. I'd have been France by 30, England by 10, and Ireland by 20. Don't know what that score would be, but I'll definitely settle for 40!

Round 2:

Italy by 3
Ireland by 7
Draw for England/France

Simon Griffiths

08-02-05, 18:02

In order to maintain my position at the top of the table, I shall be holding back my predicitons until the teams are announced (in particular, Ireland re. centre partnership).

Simon Griffiths

12-02-05, 09:02

Now I know the inside info (i.e. BOD and D'Arcy are out, but then everyone knows that now!) I can make my predictions:

Italy by 3 = 33 plus 10 points for wrong winner = 43
Ireland by 7 - 20 points
Draw for England/France - 1 for margin, 5 for not predicting a winner (? draws never happen in the NFL, so this is an impromptu solution to the problem!) = 6